


under the aspen tree

by erebones



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Beards (Facial Hair), Cunnilingus, Epistolary, Established Relationship, Explicit Sexual Content, M/M, Oral Sex, Outdoor Sex, Post-Canon, Scissoring, Trans Claude von Riegan, Trans Lorenz Hellman Gloucester, Trans Male Character, Vaginal Fingering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-07
Updated: 2021-01-07
Packaged: 2021-03-17 14:27:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28601421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erebones/pseuds/erebones
Summary: An afternoon of decadent respite between two parted lovers.
Relationships: Lorenz Hellman Gloucester/Claude von Riegan
Comments: 4
Kudos: 124





	under the aspen tree

**Author's Note:**

> CW's etc: claude and lorenz are both trans men in this fic. claude has had top surgery and fantasy hormones, lorenz has not. lorenz mostly uses somewhat old-fashioned/florid language to refer to his body (i.e. bud, petals, etc), but does use cunny and breasts once or twice. claude's body is referred to with masc-aligned terms.

_My Leicester Rose—_

_Sometimes it seems our work is never-ending. Each new victory brings on its heels a slew of new problems, new quarrels, new struggles that must be overcome. When I last wrote to you it was from my bed, on the heels of a head cold that turned into something worse. My physician all but ordered me to remain there for a week straight, and forbade me from even looking at a single petition. It was infuriating, at first—but then everything caught up with me at once, and I slept for most of that week. I think Nader was ready to kill me for my negligence._

_Since then I’ve been trying (sometimes without success, I admit) to take better care of myself. It hasn’t been an easy process. I’m learning to delegate certain tasks that once I never would have trusted to anyone else. I’m learning to put down the quill once in a while and avail myself of the stunning views the palace proper has to offer._

_I know we both feel the urgency of our calling. Once I believed the faster we could burn through these first few years of reform, the sooner we would be together again. Indulge in the fruits of our labor. But I’m starting to learn that not everything can be solved with a scheme. Sometimes, the only cure for a reluctant noble or a tangled legal process is time. We may have more power combined than nearly any other ruler alive, but we are only mortal._

_My love, this is an earnest petition to take some time now and then to rest. To put matters of state out of your mind. Hilda tells me you spend almost all your time in Derdriu, even when the Round Table is retired for the season. How long has it been since you visited Gloucester? Why not take a week, two weeks, even a month to return to the country and get some space from your work. I’m certain it will sail along without your masterful navigation, particularly in the off-season._

_To further inspire you to allow yourself respite, I will be visiting the Gloucester country estate in the late summer. Fully off the books. Nader says I need a vacation. A proper one. Will I see you there?_

_Your ever devoted_

_CvR_

><

Lorenz hasn’t been to the Gloucester estate for more than two nights together since the war ended. The place was dank and dreary and shut-up after his father quit it to flee to Adrestia and get himself killed by an unlucky bandit raid, and lingering there too long made Lorenz’s skin crawl. Too many memories infested it. Too many servants he couldn’t trust. So he’d given it over to the control of an honorable steward, one Ser Ignatz Victor, and quit it entirely for the much fresher, more fashionable Gloucester townhouse in Derdriu.

It’s been two years since he last laid eyes on it, and he spends most of the carriage ride with his gut in knots and a dapple of sweat on his brow. Truth be told he’s not sure how much of it is born of anxiety at returning to his childhood home, and how much belongs to the endless busywork he left behind, now sitting untouched and stagnant.

_We are only mortal,_ Claude had said. How apt those words seem now.

The day is stiflingly warm, even with the windows open. Late in the morning he signals the driver to stop, and after a brief rest by the side of the road, the wagon with his belongings and his horse tied alongside catch up to them.

“I’m riding on ahead,” he says, more imperiously than he feels. His starched collar is wilting at his neck, and he removed his cravat a long time ago to try and stave off the growing claustrophobia.

But the handful of servants he’d brought from town don’t bat an eye. Charles, a bright and promising young stablehand with an impressive eye for horseflesh, leaps off the wagon and prepares Hestia’s tack without a murmur. He plants a kiss to her velvety nose afterward, but Lorenz pretends not to notice. If the stables are in sufficiently good order when they arrive, he has half a mind to assign him there instead, with hopes of expanding the dwindled Gloucester paddocks to something that rivals Aegir’s famous horseflesh.

“Will you not take an extra man with you?” his driver asks anxiously, perhaps thinking of his father’s ill-fated demise.

“Nonsense.” Lorenz swings astride Hestia with a poorly stifled sigh of relief. “It’s but two miles, and a straight shot. If you arrive and I am not there, then you can tell me you told me so.”

“Aye, sir,” the driver says, with a gloomy tug to his forelock. Lorenz clucks his tongue and in a moment, they’ve left the stuffy carriage and all his accoutrements behind.

Within a few minutes he’s feeling more like himself, and by the time he crests the last hill he’s wishing he’d switched over sooner—Hestia is still energetic beneath him despite the quarter-day’s ride from the inn where they’d broken their journey, and Lorenz has only just managed to work out the kinks of a day and a half stuffed in a carriage like a sausage in too-small casing. He can’t justify the purchase of a larger one, not with how little he would need to make use of it, but he thinks fervently that he’d rather ride all the way to Derdriu in a sprightly summer storm than get back into that blasted contraption.

Then Gloucester spreads out before him, and Lorenz pulls up to stare at her. It’s the same grand manor he once called home, certainly, but it’s world away from the grim, lonely place he’d fled to join Claude’s cause. The heavy iron shutters have been traded for lighter, more fashionable whitewashed wood, and a bevy of roses climb the aged exterior, entwined with wisteria and honeysuckle now in full bloom. The front yard is busy, as befitting a country estate; rather than the splendid circular drive that welcomes visitors of state to the Derdriu apartments, Gloucester’s floral facade beams down upon servants going about their daily tasks, villagers bringing their goods for sale or trade, and, at the center of it all like a verdant shepherd, Ser Ignatz Victor standing serene, head bowed in conversation with someone Lorenz doesn’t know.

His arrival goes unnoticed at first, like a wave creeping unbroken along the sand. He nearly makes it to the yard itself before everyone seems to see him at once, and suddenly the flurried movement grinds to a halt, interrupted by bow and curtseys as the lord of the manor makes his approach.

“Lorenz!” Ignatz calls, lifting his hand in greeting. He catches Hestia’s reins himself, though it’s hardly necessary, and holds her steady as Lorenz dismounts with as much grace as he can muster. “You’re early.”

“I rode ahead. I expect my retinue, such as it is, will arrive within the hour.”

“Well, welcome home. I trust you’ll find everything in good order. If you would like meal or to refresh yourself before business—”

“Victor, I’m here to get _away_ from business,” Lorenz interrupts, though truthfully he’s not averse to accepting his duchal responsibilities while he’s here and getting a handle on the current affairs of Gloucester. Ignatz sends him monthly reports, of course, but if he’s honest it’s been almost a year since he’s read one in its entirety. There always seems to be so much else to do that’s more important. “I have _very_ strict orders.”

“Of course.” Ignatz bows, but he’s stifling a smile. A wave of relief breaks over Lorenz that he’d given his friend this position rather than hire some simpering, bow-and-scraping stranger. The candor is… refreshing.

“I’m happy to talk over whatever you wish, of course,” Lorenz continues, “but not right away. In fact…”

Ignatz cocks his head. “Yes?”

“You may find this odd,” Lorenz admits, “but I think I’d like to examine the grounds first. Alone. Not an _official_ inspection, you understand,” he adds quickly, seeing the confusion on Ignatz’s face. “It’s been a rather slow and stuffy journey, that’s all; Hestia has another mile or so in her if I judge correctly.”

“As you like. Your rooms are ready, of course. I can have a cold lunch prepared and a hot bath ready as soon as you return.”

“You’re truly Goddess-sent,” Lorenz says fervently. “Shall we say an hour?”

Ignatz gives his acquiescence, and Lorenz shakes his hand before swinging astride Hestia once more, to the confusion of those assembled. A short word and a gesture from Ignatz, and things slide into motion once more, and Lorenz picks his way through the flow, around to the back of the house to where the gardens once were.

The gardens are still there, in fact, but they’re nothing like the overgrown, untended wilderness his father had left it to. Under the care of properly dedicated gardeners, the rear yard is a stunning blend of herb garden, vegetable garden, fountain pool, mathematically-maintained shrubbery, and roses of every description. Lorenz rides past slowly, in awe, and vows to return after lunch for a properly appreciative inspection.

Beyond the gardens stretch open farmland, rotating fields and grazeland interspersed with forests as old as Leicester itself. These woods and fields were Lorenz’s kingdom as a boy, in those precious sunlit years before his father’s stubborn strictness closed its iron fist around his life. He forces himself to recall instead those blissful summer afternoons learning to ride his pony in the paddock, or playing knights with a few of the local boys. The hot sun and twenty years blur the memories, but the sweetness still comes through, softening the hard knot of grief and fury that scarred over the place in his heart where Gloucester lives.

He intends to ride as far as the easy open fields will take him, but a small copse catches his eye, with the glint of running water tucked inside it like a jewel inside its casing. He suddenly realizes how warm he is, how dry his throat. With a soft touch, he guides Hestia toward it, already plucking at the buttons on his tunic.

By the time they reach the edge of the stream—a narrow, winding thing, but with a generous oxbow that’s grown deep in the bosom of the copse—he’s draped his tunic over the front of Hestia’s saddle. He loosens her girth to give her breathing room and leaves her to graze as he sheds the rest of his clothing and steps into the water.

It would be frigid at any other time of year, but this late in the summer it’s a mere balmy chill that lifts goosebumps to his skin and wafts over him like silk. Despite the unusual depth, there’s enough of a current to keep debris from accumulating, and he ducks gratefully beneath the surface as his toes dig into the soft loamy bottom. Standing upright, the water just barely meets his waist. The chill seizes the core of him, and he shivers, widening his stance to let the current run between his legs. The faintest sensation, but worth savoring.

Sufficiently scoured of the long journey, Lorenz lets himself sink back into the water, floating on his back with arms outstretched. Overhead, the sunlight cuts through the trees like chips of diamond. It dapples his face and breast in warmth, and he shuts his eyes to better enjoy the utter calm.

He drifts. Time unravels itself around him like the stream, slow-quick, cool beneath but warm above until it all runs together in a senseless parade of light and shadow. Birdsong cuts through the haze, sometimes, or the sigh of wind through the trees. Now and then he thinks he hears a voice, a long-lost, far-loved voice that sometimes visits him in dreams. His fingers curl along the surface of the water like the petals of lilies opening to the sun. Water dapples his cheeks and his hair flows in the tender current, and that gentle voice coaxes his eyes open.

“Lorenz… look at me, beloved.”

Lorenz blinks, his brain slow to connect the voice with the vision before his eyes. It’s a face he knows well, and yet not at all: a handsome face, cast in shadow, the sun a halo behind a lustrously curled head. He can make out green eyes as dark as moss at the bottom of a pool, a strong nose, the gleam of an ivory smile behind a thick, well-trimmed beard gracing an elegant jaw. Lorenz licks his lips, trying to make sense of it. “I… Claude?”

The smile widens, carving dimples into sun-kissed cheeks. “The very same.” A warm hand grazes Lorenz’s arm, then slips beneath, and he finds himself being lifted into the air, into the strong arms of his beloved.

“ _Claude_.” Still muzzy with sleep, Lorenz cleaves to his warmth unapologetically, wrapping his arms around Claude’s shoulders and burying his nose into his sweaty neck. He’s obviously just come from the humid warmth of the full noonday sun—he smells ripe with it, undercut with leather polish and the sweet tang of dried grass. “Where on earth did you spring from?”

“A little old place called Almyra. You may have heard of it.” Claude’s amusement rumbles deep within his chest, cresting like a wave as he bears Lorenz to shore, entirely unconcerned with the water sluicing his breeches and seeping into his unlaced shirt. His bare brown feet surmount the mossy bank, and Lorenz realizes he’d shed his outer tunic and boots before plunging in after him. The tunic in particular is spread out across the sun-flecked grass, and he lays Lorenz upon it with great care. “There. Are you comfortable, dearheart?”

“Your tunic is scratchy,” Lorenz grouses, but he wriggles his shoulders deeper into it all the same. “And you didn’t answer my question.”

“I flew here, silly. We landed just a little after you’d come and gone.” Claude tugs his shirt the rest of the way out of his breeches and settles in at Lorenz’s side, propped up on one elbow—the better to ogle his nakedness, but Lorenz is in too good a mood to feign offense. “When Ignatz told me where you were, I set off on foot after you.”

Lorenz hums and stretches his arms over his head. The warm air feels pleasant on his wet, chilled skin, and he can feel his nipples tighten in the gentle breeze. “Not on wyvernback?”

“I didn’t want to terrify the locals any more than we already had.” Claude’s eyes roam over him shamelessly. “And anyway, I’m here now.” He leans down, lips hovering dangerously close to Lorenz’s own. “With you.”

Before the kiss has a chance to land, Lorenz puts his fingertips against Claude’s parted lips. “Wait. I want to look at you.”

“You are most welcome to.”

“You are… hairier than when I saw you last.”

Claude grins and turns his head this way and that, showing off the beard that now adorns his jaw. “Do you like it?”

Lorenz just nods, for once robbed of speech. He has a better view now, with the full scope of his wits returned, and he can properly admire how the subtle extension of his sideburns has fleshed out into proper growth, framing his mouth elegantly, a perfect compliment to the piercing peridot color of his eyes. He reaches out, and Claude holds still for his perusal, watching him in return as Lorenz explores the soft bristles, his arched nose, the chapped fullness of his lips. “Did you fly all this way?”

“Mmhmm. Over the mountains. Gave old man Goneril a wave as we passed over the Throat.”

Lorenz’s hands trail through his windswept hair, down his throat to rest tentatively on his broad shoulders. “Was it not terribly cold?”

“It was bearable.” Claude’s smile softens and he finally deigns to reach out and stroke a warm, calloused palm along Lorenz’s wet skin. “Thoughts of you kept me warm.”

“Claude…”

“Shhh.” His head bows again, unchallenged, and he brushes a soft, dry kiss to Lorenz’s shoulder. “It’s only the truth.”

Lorenz blinks rapidly to banish the stinging behind his eyes. “Well, here I am.” He tilts his head readily at the touch of Claude’s hand, allowing him to kiss the tender skin beneath his jaw. “At… at your disposal.”

“Mmm. So I see.” The scrape of his beard is softer than Lorenz had imagined as it brushes against his neck and jaw, but it’s not exactly silky-smooth. He can feel the subtle sting of it even after it’s gone, and he knows when he looks in a mirror later he’ll have a ruddy blush scoured into the fair surface of his skin for all to see. Embarrassment wells up, and with it, arousal: a potent mix that curls low in his belly and strums between his legs as Claude’s lips finally find his.

He hasn’t kissed Claude in almost a year. The reality of it hits him rather suddenly, and Lorenz gasps as Claude rolls over him, kissing him more deeply. Lorenz moans and opens his mouth to the gentle assault, fingers tangled in his windblown hair, nipples plucked to cherry-red peaks by clever hands as Claude explores him without restraint.

“Oh, Claude…”

“You _are_ a little minx, aren’t you,” Claude purrs. The gentle abrasion of his beard trails a line of fire down Lorenz’s neck and nuzzles into his soft chest. “Bare-breasted, naked under the sun, like some kind of… of wood nymph—”

“I believe the word you’re looking for is _naiad_ ,” Lorenz babbles, putting his fingers to his mouth to feel the tingling warmth Claude left behind.

“Whatever the word is, you’re so beautiful I can’t stand it. _Look_ at you.” Claude lurches back to sit on his heels, mouth reddened from his attentions. He swipes a palm across his face, and the sound of skin against smooth, dark bristles is electrifying. “Gods, Lorenz, I missed you. I thought I’d kept a faithful memory of you inside my head, but now that I have the reality in front of me… your skin, your hair, the way you smell…”

“I know what you mean,” Lorenz whispers, then swallows. Hard. Claude’s eyes sweep him like a physical touch, hot and prickling. When he shifts his weight, those eyes dart to his parted thighs, and the small thatch of wet curls between them. “Claude…”

“Yes, beloved?”

Lorenz wet his lips. “Kiss me.” But when Claude surges forward to do just that, he stays him with a hand to his shoulder. “Not there.”

Claude meets his eyes, so close he can count the dark eyelashes that sweep against his browbone. There’s a hint of a smile in his voice when he murmurs, “Where? I’m at your command.”

“Everywhere,” Lorenz ekes out.

“Mmmm.” Claude pecks his lips, the slightest tease. “You’ll have to be more specific than that. I could happily drown in the taste of your mouth.”

He leans down to kiss him again. Lorenz allows it, because he feels similarly, but he catches Claude’s hand before it can tangle in his damp hair and guides it lower. Over his breasts, pink and tingling; down his belly, where a few remaining droplets of streamwater have gathered in his navel; then, losing his nerve at the last minute, to the soft inner part of his thigh, a scant few inches from the place he wants it most.

“Here,” he whispers into the dark thatch of Claude’s beard. “And—please, Claude, I want you.”

“All right, dear one.” Claude kisses him one more time, a deep, wet melding of mouths that promises things Lorenz scarcely dares to name. “Lie back. I’m not so cruel as to make you beg.”

“Liar,” Lorenz murmurs, but he obeys, reclining against Claude’s discarded tunic, his hair strewn across the thick bed of moss beneath.

Claude presses a bristly kiss to his knuckles. “Just close your eyes and think of Leicester.”

“Hah! As if. I will think of nothing but your sweet kisses, and the way your tongue moves me to— _ah_ —to poetry…” Lorenz trails off, staring sightlessly at the lacy canopy above their heads. Claude’s lips have found his inner thigh, and there they linger, caressing the tender skin with such careful touches it nearly brings tears to his eyes.

“Go on.” Claude lays flat on his belly between his legs, eyes twinkling with mischief. As Lorenz watches, he coaxes one thigh over his shoulder and turns to press rough-edged kisses to it, interspersed with the blunter scrape of teeth. “Describe it to me,” he hums against smooth skin. “How I make you feel.”

“I… I can’t.”

“Sure you can.” Another suckling kiss, laved with tongue. When Claude pulls back, there’s a distinct bruise left behind, and his pale skin is starting to pinken everywhere Claude’s lips have touched. “Dictate it to me. As if you were writing me one of your naughty letters.”

Lorenz flushes and drops his head back again. They write each other prolifically, to the longsuffering dismay of their personal couriers—sometimes two, three, seven letters in a week, each bundle containing a multitude of personal anecdotes, mundane thoughts, lists, arguments, poetry clippings, pressed flowers and coded plans… and, sometimes, dirty thoughts. The sort of thoughts that keep Lorenz up at night, knuckle-deep in his own purse as he reads and rereads Claude’s latest missive by candlelight and imagines the sound of his voice reading aloud to him, telling him what to do—

The flurry of his thoughts is snatched up and thrown to the winds at the sudden pressure of closed lips to his curls. Lorenz jerks and is stilled in the same motion, steadied by Claude’s grip on his thigh.

_Lorenz_ … A softly whispered name, spoken like a secret to his most private place. Lorenz shivers and clenches around nothing, hot under the skin and slick, so slick he can hear it over the rustling trees when Claude parts him with his first two fingers. Lorenz arches against him, or tries to—Claude’s grip on him is impressive, and he can do nothing but quake as those fingers slide up to tease his swollen bud.

“Claude,” he gasps. The sunny blue sky spins overhead in mosaicked flashes as the branches part in the breeze, but he is unmoved. All his focus is narrowed down to the place where Claude’s lips softly, softly nudge against the apex of his pleasure.

“Tell me,” Claude murmurs, and the movement of his beard against him is excruciating and divine. “Is it like you remember?”

“No,” Lorenz breathes. His lungs hitch at the first brush of Claude’s tongue, but he presses on, desperate to be rewarded. “I mean—your lips, yes, your tongue—fuck, Claude, _yes_.” His back arches and his bare feet flounder, desperate for purchase as Claude licks between his folds, too much and yet not nearly enough. “Your tongue… please…”

“ _More_ ,” Claude growls.

“Your beard is—it’s so, so unlike anything I’ve ever… _oh_.”

Lorenz draws his other knee wide, completely prostrating himself for Claude’s perusal. His fumbling words have gained him a new prize: Claude’s open mouth, kissing him, licking the juices from his core. Each new movement is another scrape of beard against his inner thighs, against the soft skin that conceals his flower from view. As he hesitates, Claude looks up at him, nose buried in his heat, and rubs his chin hard against his vulva.

“ _Yes_ ,” Lorenz sobs, head thrown back against the much-rumpled tunic. His fingers dig deeply into the soft mossy bank as he rocks against Claude’s face unimpeded, filthy and desperate as he chases the pleasure-pain. Claude permits it, permits his wanton rutting—even encourages it, moaning as he’s smothered, as Lorenz grinds against his beard and wails when his bud finally scrapes brutally against Claude’s mustache. “Claude, _oh—_ oh, fuck, yes, _yes_ — _!_ ”

He goes rigid at the peak, unable to draw breath as his body shakes and shudders in the grass. It’s as if his entire pelvis is trying to wring itself dry after months of barren drought. His hips lift off the ground and his pleasure gushes out abundantly, soaking Claude’s beard and dripping down his tongue when he sticks it out to lap up the excess.

“Beautiful,” Claude praises. But if he means to say more, his voice is muffled as he descends to Lorenz’s cunny, lips smeared against lips as if he seeks some fountain of youth buried there. Even as his first peak fades, Lorenz can feel another building. He squirms and whimpers, unashamed, fingers digging pink marks into his own thighs as he pulls them wider for Claude to sup between. Then the clever rub of fingers peels him open, presses into his depths, and when he spends a second time he swears he can feel each distinct knuckle and callous as his soft flesh tightens around them like a corset bound in steel.

“Enough,” he gasps weakly in the aftermath, when even Claude’s butter-smooth tongue is too much against sweetly-abused petals. He fumbles for him weakly, drags him up in a tangle of unlaced shirt and a beard still dripping with his own juices, and kisses him as deeply as his clumsy tongue will allow.

“I love you.” Claude brands the words into his brow with slick lips and submits to him, working together to rid him of his clothes. He kneels up to shrug out of his shirt while Lorenz yanks his belt open and delves a hand into his breeches. The cloth is still wet from the river, but inside his smallclothes is a different kind of wetness, hot and slick. When Lorenz curls his hand, Claude’s manhood is there to meet it, hard and slippery and unmistakably larger than the last time they bedded each other.

“Lie with me,” Lorenz says, fondling him shamelessly. He watches Claude’s face as he pushes back the hood of his cock with his thumb, as he strokes along the hot groove to the hungry cavity that welcomes his fingers with ease. “Please.”

“I thought,” Claude croaks, “you’d had enough.”

“I just needed a brief respite. I’m ready.”

Claude groans and pulls his hand away with evident reluctance, then shoves breeches and smalls down and off. Now entirely bare, Lorenz can appreciate the fullness of him: his musculature as it flexes beneath the skin, the hair that covers his chest and trails down his belly to his apex. And his manhood, red and straining, a cherry amongst the thicket as he straddles one of Lorenz’s thighs to bring them together.

“Here,” Claude orders, breathless. He presses Lorenz down against the grass, legs entwined, and grapples with his hips for leverage. “Like this.”

Then they are joined, the evidence of their desire melding together and dripping down Lorenz’s thighs. The sweet ache grips his insides relentlessly, an insistent throb that builds and builds until all he can feel is the slick, delicious heat, the way Claude’s manhood rubs against his own. His dark curls are wiry but softer than his beard, a gentle coareneses that tickles his bud with increasing fervor. Lorenz’s soft mewls of pleasure become full-throated cries as he nears a third paroxysm with terrifying speed.

“Claude, wait,” he gasps suddenly. To his credit, Claude does, though the ruddy flush blotching his chest betrays how near he is to the edge. With trembling hands, Lorenz pushes himself up nearly to sitting, his leg over Claude’s shoulder the only thing keeping their chests apart. “I want you to kiss me.”

Claude groans and drops his head to Lorenz’s collarbone. “Beloved…”

“Please.” With a careful motion, Lorenz coaxes their bodies together, and gives a throaty hum to feel Claude’s erection part his folds easily. “Let me taste your peak, when it comes.”

“My mouth,” Claude murmurs, already leaning closer, “is not where you’ll find my _peak_.” But he kisses him regardless, little more than teeth and tongue. Their range of motion is severely curtailed this way, but the quick little thrusts of Claude’s hips, the obscene turbulence of lips above and below, quickly cultivates the finish.

Claude spends first, copiously, repeatedly. He jerks against Lorenz with his head bowed, but Lorenz can still appreciate the expression he wears, agony and serenity entwined. The tunic beneath them is quickly saturated, and Lorenz joins him only a moment later, catching a whimper between his teeth as his insides squeeze and shiver until he has nothing left to give.

“Easy, darling. Take it slow.” Claude gentles him back to earth, hand to spine to hip. The core of him still burns, tingling and raw. Lorenz lets his thighs fall open and sighs in soft relief at the cool breeze that wafts over him. “How do you feel?”

“Mmm.” Lorenz peeks his eyes open. “How… can you form words?”

Claude laughs and lays down beside him, careless of the tremendous wet spot. “Very easily, when it comes to you. You are my favorite subject, Lorenz.”

“Subject of conversation, or subject to your rule?”

“As if I could ever hope to rule _you._ ” Claude nuzzles closer, beard grazing his jaw and ear as he murmurs, “You’re being far too pedantic for a man who’s just had his quim eaten within an inch of its life— _ouch!_ ” He flinches back from Lorenz’s half-hearted smack, giggling. “Is that any way to treat your most loyal and appreciative lover?”

“You talk as though I have the energy for any others,” Lorenz scolds, but he rouses himself from his stupor and takes Claude’s face between his palms. The texture of his beard is still new and unfamiliar, but the man beneath it is still his beautiful Claude, his Khalid, his king. Green eyes crinkle at their edges, lined more deeply than they’d been when they parted last. “Claude.”

“Yes, my love?”

“Your clothes are soaked in river water and worse, and mine are strewn about and likely full of leaves and bits of grass.”

Claude’s grin grows wider. “Is that a problem?”

“Of course it is! We can’t return to the house naked—”

“Why not?”

“Because—because!” he stammers, too flustered at the image to properly refute him.

“Then let us lay here a little longer, until my things are dry.” Claude slips a hand beneath Lorenz’s thigh to squeeze his backside. “I’m sure we can think of ways to occupy ourselves.”

Lorenz bites his lip. “I told Ignatz I would return within the hour…”

“Ignatz sent me after you himself. He knows not to wait up.” Claude dips his head for a slow, shallow, but _thorough_ kiss. “Any other objections, dearheart?”

Lorenz weaves his hands into Claude’s hair and draws him back in. “None whatsoever.”

><

_My sun and stars—_

_I’m writing this on the terrace that overlooks the back gardens of Gloucester. We have just finished an early supper and are quite an our ease: I with a fresh pot of tea, and you reclining upon the divan but a few feet away, snoring gently. I cannot begrudge you the rest. It’s a long way over the mountains, and flying may be quick, but it is hardly restful._

_I didn’t realize how terribly I missed you until I finally held you in my arms again… heard your voice… felt the sweetness of your kiss. I see now that I was avoiding it at all costs, burying my loneliness beneath paperwork and petitions until I could hardly see past my own nose. Another month or two and I would have run myself into the ground, the same as you. Therefore, I propose a small alliance._

_The subject: you and I. The terms: four times a year, more if possible, we will make time in our busy schedules to spend a week together. The conditions: we shall trade locales back and forth, so that we may spread the burden of long travel equally._

_If you are amenable, I look forward to receiving your acquiescence in person. At great length. If you must review the contract with your own people, then I anticipate your reply in writing at your earliest convenience. For now, I remain eternally yours, and look forward to the day when we may put our heavy burdens aside and be as one._

_Your faithful and adoring_

_L.H.G._

**Author's Note:**

> for a friend <3 thank you for commissioning me!


End file.
